Orcharding and water conservation

Autumn is a time of piling up work in the orchard. It is necessary not only to harvest fruit, but also to take cuttings for grafting noble varieties and for rooting for shoot cuttings. Watch over the condition of cellars and drying rooms. Spray and shape trees and shrubs. Rejuvenate old but promising specimens and slowly protect them from winter. Grub out the weakest, no longer yielding specimens, and plant something new in their place. Fallen leaves and fungus-infested branches will not bury or burn on their own. Sometimes it is necessary to protect the fruit with nets, “pop” from a bang cannon or call a falconer. What do fruit farming and our waters have in common? As it turns out, quite a lot!

Orcharding and water status

Orcharding, including berry farming, threatens Europe’ s freshwater and wetland ecosystems in several ways:

1. is using more and more freshwater for agricultural irrigation, including non-renewable and conditionally renewable groundwater;
2. leads to pollution of rivers and flowing lakes and then the seas with fertilizer and pesticide residues;
3. in hot and dry climates leads to salinization of irrationally irrigated soils;
4. consumes a lot of natural peat (extracted from high and transitional bogs) for blueberry plantations and for establishing new orchards (40 to 75 thousand liters of peat per 1 hectare of blueberries);
5. In places, it disrupts the biogeochemical cycling of calcium, binding ^Ca2+ ions in wood and fruit, resulting in too few cations of this biogen entering lakes and rivers;
6. with industrial cultivation generates an additional pool of greenhouse gases (escaping into the atmosphere) and microplastics (running off into waterways over time);
7. in a black fallow regime aggravates soil erosion, leading to turbid waters [1].

In order that the wolf be full and the sheep be whole

Fortunately, we do not have to choose between running an orchard and protecting our waters and wetlands. A number of ways have been developed to remove, or at least significantly reduce, the above threats. We need to thoroughly reduce our use of water, as well as artificial and natural fertilizers, especially peats and muck. The paths to more resource-efficient orcharding are many. They are:

1. Appropriate selection of species and varieties to local conditions: soil type, relief and microclimate;
2. Rational preparation of the site for the new plantation;
3. Replacing high peat with other fertilizers that are more climate- and biodiversity-friendly (e.g.: homemade composts, innovative fertilizers made from garbage, sewage and the remains of invasive species);
4. Reducing the cultivation and consumption of blueberry (highbush) in favor of mineral-yielding plants, including its lesser-known cousins, shown below [1, 2].

Proper preparation is 3/4 of the success!

Optimal selection of fruit plants and preparation of the site are three quarters of success. The vast majority of them prefer fresh, moderately fertile soils. This applies both to the well-known apple and plum trees, walnut and hazelnut, as well as to collector curiosities – from minikiwi to acebia to Virginia hurma. On light and sandy soils, you can grow cherry and sweet cherry, scarlet thorn (goi berry), and, of lesser-known species, sea buckthorn, silverleaf cherimoya, umbellifer and multifloral olive.

Edible chokecherry, certain mulberries and quince trees are also quite dry-bearing. On the banks of rivers – in riparian habitats – you can experiment with growing pecan and other pecan trees, grafted onto pecan trees. The most moisture-loving of our orchard plants are black currant and coral calla. The former remains a characteristic species of currant alder forests, while the latter grows wild in riparian and low oak-hornbeam forests. Of the lesser-known exotics, the Virginia black cherry, especially grafted onto the common black cherry, has an almost equally great need for moisture. Slightly acidic, but fertile and deep soils are suitable for urodlin (peacock) [3, 4, 5, 6].

Preparing the site for a new plantation or resting the soil after cutting down an old orchard can be done with climate and biodiversity-friendly methods. It is worth taking care of crop rotation with a high proportion of broad beans and brassicas [1].

Instead of highbush blueberries

What to replace highbush blueberry with? After all, Polish women and men have come to love it more strongly than other superfoods! For several decades now, it has been displacing its native cousins from our tables: cherries picked in the forests and goldenberries from the wetlands. As of July 2023. By August 2024, the number of purchasers of these non-dirty hands and keyboards of blueberries had increased by 17 percent in Poland. Ophthalmologists recommend it for eye fatigue caused by too much smartphone scrolling. No wonder, then, that blueberry plantations have been displacing currant and gooseberry crops for at least 30 years.

They are arriving faster than orchards of sea buckthorn, miniquince or kamchatka berry. The Vaccinium genus includes a number of other species with similar flavor, but very different soil preferences. Several of them could be planted in Poland on mineral or humus soils, so without consuming huge amounts of natural high peat. It is worth experimenting with the cultivation of, among others, lowbush blueberry (narrow-leafed) Vaccinium angustifolium, chinkabush (velvetleafed) V. myrtilloides and stinkberry (mapleberry) V. praestans. Their family – the heathers – includes a number of further genera with edible berries or fleshy pouches, potentially tolerating our climate well, such as the blueberry Gaylussacia baccata and the salal golteria (old madder) Gaulteria shallon. There is plenty to choose from when looking for less “peat-eating” substitutes for highbush blueberry [2, 6, 7].

Scarlet thorn, bearing goi berries, is planted in large numbers in our country, but on the slopes of railroad tracks and between highways, not in orchards. Akebias have their lovers, but as ornamental vines (even honey-bearing ones, although no one has studied their forage yield, and even if they have, they haven’t published the results…), not fruit plants. Perhaps it would be worthwhile for them to establish themselves in our orchards as well?

In the article, I used, among other things. z:

1. Demestihas, C., Plénet, D., Génard, M., Raynal, C., Lescourret, F. 2017 Ecosystem services in orchards. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 37: 1-21.
2. Kapler, A. 2021. The biology, ecology, and cultivation potential of lesser-known polyphenol-rich plants. ss. 143-160. w: Kalemba-Drożdż M., Grzywacz-Kisielewska A., Cierniak A. (red.) Surowce polifenolowe. Zastosowania i perspektywy. Krakowska Akademia im. Frycza-Modrzewskiego, Kraków, s. 198.
3. https://www.clematis.com.pl/informacje-o-roslinach/aktinidia-i-inne-owocowe/607-niebieskie-serdelki/ [dostęp 26.09.2024]
4. https://derenjadalny.com/oferta/czeremcha?lang=pl-PL [dostęp 26.09.2024]
5. https://derenjadalny.com/oferta/kalina [dostęp 26.09.2024]
6. https://polskiesuperowoce.pl/releases/dla-handlu [dostęp 26.09.2024]
7. https://polskiesuperowoce.pl/335004-superowoc-z-polski [dostęp 26.09.2024]